Sorted
Day forty of ninety: I paid October salary, sorted the bank that spent the morning threatening to close my account, and spent day two of a water fast shrinking a list of makeup artists and arguing about a tiny door in a garage wall.
Day thirty-nine ended with a name locked after eight days, a three-day water fast just started, and me as the bottleneck in front of a queue of dispatches. Last night I cleared the whole queue in one sitting, publish, publish, publish, until the site was finally current and the queue was empty. So Wednesday opened lighter than any day in weeks: day two of water only, day forty of ninety, and for once, nothing waiting on my verdict before coffee. Well. Before water.
The day actually started in a stranger place. In the early hours I asked for an unfiltered assessment of myself, exactly honest, no softening, and I took it standing up. Then, separately, I asked to be flattered. Both requests were sincere. A founder contains multitudes, and on day two of a fast, all of the multitudes are hungry.
By midday I got to deliver my favourite kind of update, the kind that is just closures in a row. October salary has been paid. Everything sitting in the approval queue, airtime and salary, has been approved. And the bank that emailed me at ten this morning with a final closure notice, then again at eleven saying more information was needed, then again after lunch with a new deadline in November, that bank has been sorted. Sorted is my word and I am keeping it. The one payment that did not go through today failed in the correct direction: a renewal I have been trying to let lapse could not charge me because the card on file was wrong. They are asking me to add another card. I will not be doing that. Sometimes the system protects you from yourself by accident.
The main work of the day was the campaign list. Last night the merged artist list stood at eight hundred and thirty-six, and then the forty who have not posted in thirty days got deleted, backup kept, because a list you are afraid to cut is just a crowd. Seven hundred and ninety-six remain, and today was curation day, my day, working the list down toward the final five hundred in between meetings. The meetings added their usual homework to my side of the table: send the next lip liner colours to the supplier, redo the wear test properly this time, review a media plan that is behind schedule and find where I jump in. The third campaign meeting of the week also ran this morning, and its notes had still not arrived by evening, which is its own kind of suspense.
Content, meanwhile, had a clean day. All five stories went up and were verified, one per account. The second piece of the home sourcing series went live, the one about why two fixtures that look identical cost differently, which leaves exactly one starter piece still waiting on my call. The kitchen episode of the doctrine reel series posted at midday, and I closed a question that has been hanging since the weekend: the first episode stays live in its old lower-quality version. Leave it, I said. Not every imperfect thing needs to be redone at higher resolution. And the grocery rule reel got rebuilt, because I learned what a pass-through door from the garage into the pantry is, asked for it in the caption, then said no, put it in the reel itself, so version two now shows the little door doing its one job while the bags land straight on the shelves. It is awaiting my post, schedule, or hold call, like half my life. The farm account's rubber spread post also went live today, four countries ranked by export value and us not first, which is exactly the kind of honest number this whole project runs on.
In between the list work, the home catalogue kept moving, and an overnight reply landed from the mailbox supplier with a set price I still have to verify before anyone celebrates. Two new invitations also arrived this morning, a gifted collaboration offer and a pop-up invitation, and both are sitting unanswered while I decide if either deserves a reply. Then the afternoon brought a decline: the seller approval for the US store was refused over product images, with a resubmission path in the email and nobody yet owning the fix. Wins and homework, same inbox, no respect for sequencing.
The four o'clock block belonged to the Japan trip, and it started with a correction that could have been expensive. The dates in this morning's messages were wrong by one night: the traveller lands a day later than the plan said, so booking what was on the sheet would have paid for a night nobody sleeps there and missed a night somebody does. All three stays are now priced on the correct dates, the decision sat in that four o'clock block, the visa documents are due tomorrow, the submission is Friday, and as I write this, nothing is booked yet. A holiday should not need project management. This one has a checklist, a deadline, and a decision owner who is fasting.
Still hanging as Wednesday closes: the women's event partner still has not responded, so the display gets sized on a guess, as promised. The gym cancellation I planned to sort before my one o'clock has no outcome I can point to yet, the draft is still held, unsent. The grocery reel and a farm reel blueprint are waiting on my calls. The walk at seven is the only item today with no spreadsheet attached. Day forty ends with the scoreboard reading: one queue cleared, one salary paid, one bank sorted, one wrongful renewal defeated by a wrong card, forty inactive names deleted, eight posts live, one little door rebuilt into a reel, one seller approval declined, one trip saved from its own dates by one night. Sorted, mostly. Day forty of ninety.